Pompano To Raze Homes Residents To Leave `Slum` Apartments

November 28, 1988|By SETH BORENSTEIN, Staff Writer

POMPANO BEACH -- A teen-ager at Grace Apartments ran by Ernestine Price with an Uzi machine gun in hand last week.

``Sometimes it`s rough,`` Price said of life at the run-down 108-unit Grace Apartments, a subsidized rental and condominium tract at Northwest Third Avenue and 17th Street. ``Sometimes it`s very bad.``

But now, Price and 51 other homeowners will be moving out of Grace Apartments into new homes as part of the city`s $3.4 million relocation and rehabilitation project. Afterward, the city plans to demolish 28 apartments and renovate the 70 remaining units. Six of the remaining 10 have already been renovated and four will be used for a day-care center.

It will be the biggest undertaking of its kind in Pompano Beach.

Price has lived at Grace Apartments for more than 19 years, raising five children in the complex. She has fond memories from those years, but she is eager to leave.

``I will miss this place,`` Price said. ``But I will also be happy to get in a place where I can go home and live the way other people live.``

Living at Grace Apartments is not like living the way others do, said Price and other residents of the complex, where about 540 residents are crammed onto about four acres.

It is not the right place to raise children, said Gracie Phillips, who has lived there for eight years. There are ``neighbors against neighbors,`` and ``crack and cocaine and all that kind of stuff,`` she said.

Because of the crime and drugs, residents keep their childen inside, Phillips said.

``It`s always a fight, fight, fight,`` Price said. ``Never a day off. If you`re not fighting in here to make sure that your place is kept up or kept clean, then you got to worry about people categorizing or stigmatizing your child.``

When Price`s youngest son was a senior in high school last year, he could not come home directly from school, she said. He had to go to the Boys` Club every day ``because I did not want him to be on the street when the Raiders came,`` Price said.

With the Raiders and other street gangs outside, he could have been hurt or enticed to join them ``or just be in the way when something happened,`` Price said.

``When a child is living in a place, he should be able to come home,`` Price said.

An additional complaint is that addicts hide in vacant units the city Housing Authority has not rehabilitated, Price said.

``The drugs are the biggest thing,`` said one elderly resident who asked not to be identified. ``It`s such a slum, that`s all.``

Everybody is upset by the widespread drugs, resident Linda Jones said. ``It`s just a bad situation.``

But the crime problem is not as bad as people think, insists Jones, whose house has been broken into just once in 20 years.

Another problem is the garbage.

``It`s just ridiculous the amount of garbage or junk that has been dumped here,`` Price said.

Price said not all the trash comes from residents. People outside of the complex use the area as a dump, she said.

Overcrowding at the complex is another major problem that contributes to the drug and trash problems, Price said. The city`s plan to demolish apartments and rehabilitate some others will work because it lessens the overcrowding, she said.

``I`m pretty sure that it will cut down on the drug problem because then it won`t be as dense as it is now,`` Price said.

The problems with Grace Apartments began when the complex was built in 1960, Price said.

``It wasn`t set up right in the beginning and once it was set up, everybody wanted to blame you for buying in there,`` Price said.

Price said that when people moved in it was on the assumption that the condominium association would be trained to maintain the common areas. The association disbanded when it was unable to take care of common areas.

And the condominiums being connected to each other with joint meters further aggravated the problem, because residents would fight about who had to pay the utility bills, Price said.

Price said she is looking forward to the day she can relocate to her own lot with her own house.

``Regardless of how bad it`s been for me, it`s also been good,`` Price said. ``... I love Grace Apartments. I am going to miss them.``

Phillips laughs at the idea of missing Grace Apartments. She said there is nothing nice about living there.